Undercover High School: Episodes 5-6 » Dramabeans
Undercover High School: Episodes 5-6
by quirkycase
Our faux high schooler learns that there may be more to his mission than finding gold. As new dangers arise, he finds himself at a crossroads. Meanwhile, his homeroom teacher can’t shake the feeling that not all is as it seems with her newest student and does some investigating of her own.
EPISODES 5-6
Once again, we barely engage in the primary gold hunting mission. So far, finding the gold has felt more like a premise to get into shenanigans at the school than the main goal. This week, Hae-sung is faced with an increasingly suspicious Soo-ah who – surprise, surprise – didn’t buy his team’s flimsy explanation of some sort of surprise party for Hae-sung as the reason for hiding in his closet.
Soo-ah proves to be surprisingly observant and dogged after one too many oddities. She’s convinced Hae-sung is not a real high schooler, but her fellow teachers naturally find her suspicions ridiculous. Still, she enlists some help in doing a little spying of her own. She calls Hae-sung’s former school (the number routes to his team) and has her teacher friend spy on the Quiznos to no avail.
Ideally, Hae-sung would avoid Soo-ah so as not to give her any more ammunition, but that’s impossible when she’s his homeroom teacher. Oh, and he discovers she’s his neighbor, so he’ll have to dodge her outside of school as well. On top of that, she’s also the student council advisor.
Hae-sung is still determined to get on the student council, and for that he needs to be in the top 10 scorers on his next exam. Would just sneaking into the council room to examine the clock be an easier method for a literal spy? Yes, I imagine it would. That wouldn’t give Hae-sung a fun school-related challenge, though. After intense cramming and a whole lot of prayers from his team, Hae-sung places 10th, making him eligible for a council spot. Ye-na, the council president, decides he’s in, so Hae-sung gets his clock access.
What he doesn’t know is that Myung-joo instructed Ye-na to give him the council seat. Myung-joo is hard at work making her education city a reality, trying to win over her detractors with a carrot and stick approach. The carrot being bribes and the stick being kidnapping, torture, and possible murder. Lovely woman. Despite her extracurriculars, she manages to keep tabs on Hae-sung and his mission. But she’s not the only one paying attention. While poking around the all-important clock at night, someone leaves Hae-sung a letter saying “Hello, Agent Jung Hae-sung.”
I assumed this would be a longer mystery, but Hae-sung gets a call from the school security guard saying he knows who Hae-sung is and wants to meet. Hae-sung arrives just in time to see the man drop to his death from atop the school roof. Curiously, the man dies clutching Hae-sung’s father’s old notebook. Hae-sung spots a masked man on the roof and a fight ensues. The man keeps making a grab for the notebook but can’t get it from Hae-sung before he flees in the face of Hae-sung’s gun.
This show wastes absolutely no time on reveals. The next scene shows us the assailant is Myung-joo’s minion. Myung-joo wanted the notebook from the security guard who was an ex-NIS agent who wanted to help Hae-sung. Myung-joo has connections everywhere, including the NIS. She’s working with someone who was a colleague of Hae-sung’s father, but for once, his identity is not immediately revealed.
From what we know, Hae-sung’s father went missing on a mission and was never found. Hae-sung confronts the NIS director who confirms that his father’s went missing on the very same mission Hae-sung is now completing. It hits Hae-sung hard, discovering the first trace of his dad in decades. He’s never been able to accept that his dad is dead, so a part of him is still holding out hope that he’ll find him one day. He dives into his mission with a new goal: using the gold hunt to find his father.
The notebook contains clues his father found about the old building and the urban legends. It seems like Hae-sung’s dad uncovered more than he has – likely because he wasn’t also playing student – so his notes help Hae-sung make headway. But Hae-sung soon hits another snag. Soo-ah spotted him that night on the roof fighting the masked man and saw him pull a gun. Hae-sung is forced to come clean to prevent her from calling the cops on him, and she hilariously immediately believes him. She doesn’t even ask to see some official identification. I guess his word is good enough for her.
Soo-ah agrees to help Hae-sung with his mission, mostly hoping for some fame and glory upon its success as the benevolent civilian assisting her country. (You’d think Hae-sung could’ve told her about being an agent while keeping the mission classified, but where’s the fun in that, I guess?)
With his father’s notebook and Soo-ah’s help, Hae-sung discovers his next clue is the piano in Myung-joo’s office. They plan to use the school’s annual, high-profile mixer as a distraction, but since Hae-sung skipped school and earned demerits, he needs extra-curricular activity credits to attend. This gives the drama an excuse for a Hae-sung to participate in a swoony modeling session for school promotional materials to earn credits.
Ye-na has a bit of a breakdown at the shoot when the photographer asks her to roll up her sleeves for a casual photo. Yoo-jung is the only one who has spotted the scars on Ye-na’s wrists and helps her out with an excuse. Not that Ye-na is grateful. She treats Yoo-jung as awfully as ever, and Hae-sung overhears. It’s not the first time he’s watched Ye-na mistreat his little cousin, and despite Yoo-jung’s warnings for him to stay out of her business, he demands Ye-na apologize. Now Ye-na and Yoo-jung are both mad, leaving Soo-ah to hold Hae-sung back from trying to smooth things over with Yoo-jung.
She takes him to her mom’s restaurant and reminds him that Yoo-jung is a teenage girl with complicated relationships she needs to figure out herself. She doesn’t want her older cousin interfering on her behalf – he may be in school temporarily, but it’s Yoo-jung’s life. As they leave the restaurant, Hae-sung hears Soo-ah’s mom call her by her old name, Bong-ja. We end the week as he realizes Soo-ah and his childhood friend are one and the same.
I could’ve done without the tired childhood crush angle. Hae-sung and Soo-ah have enough in their current dynamic to drive a relationship without relying on the trope. At the very least, I hope Hae-sung doesn’t keep it a secret. If we’re going to have the childhood connection, it’d be nice to have them rekindle their friendship or talk about the intervening years after they separated. Use it as character development or an excuse for them to open up to each other more.
At this point, I have to say, the gold mystery isn’t exactly thrilling. That might be since no one is doing much actual gold hunting. For this being part spy drama, I’d like to see Hae-sung and the gang do more, you know, spying. Most information either falls into their laps or we glean it from other characters like Myung-joo. Hae-sung has done little more than sneak around in the dark a few times looking at stuff. Right now, I’m most interested in what happened to Hae-sung’s dad. I can’t imagine he’s still alive – although I wouldn’t put some good old-fashioned amnesia out of the question in a drama like this – and I’m guessing Myung-joo or her predecessor did something to him to stop him from getting the gold. Or maybe it was the double agent working with Myung-joo. Regardless, now that we have the more emotionally weighty mystery of Hae-sung’s dad intertwined with the gold, and the involvement of Soo-ah to possibly make the mission more chaotic, here’s to hoping the gold hunt takes a more interesting turn.
RELATED POSTS
